24 definitely can be a bit tight, but realistic for 3 monitor setup.
If I was going with only 2 monitors for software development, or mainly text work, there are nice 2K monitors that are about 25" that are perfect.
I have two older 27" 2K monitors as well and they tend to be too big in the long run, and 3 were untenable.
4k 27" with 2x scaling is effectively the same size as 1080p 27". But one looks like absolute crap, the other is reasonably sharp and detailed. Text is much better with higher PPI. And 4k27" is just 160 PPI, the 6k 32" monitors are 220 PPI so text is very crisp.
I don't know about other OSs, but fractional scaling "just works" on KDE Linux. The size of displayed content has nothing to do with the pixels you have. You control the physical screen size (inches) and scale factor to get the content size you want, and you buy as many pixels as you can afford to get good quality at that size. There's a parent comment on this submission talking about how his 8k 32" monitor is visibly better than 6k 32" for text sharpness; TFA says the same thing. You really want as many pixels as you can afford to buy.
Of course, the minimum (densest) content size you can use is constrained by PPI, low PPI won't be able to display very small content.
27" 4K just won't cut it.
I have had my eye on an LG[1] out there at 24" 4k (currently about 300usd) -- as that size/resolution has been the sweet spot for me for the last few years. I'm planning to pick one of these up and stick it in a closet just to have on hand in case the Dell dies on me.
4K TVs only seem to become usably readable with Chroma 4:4:4 at 38" or above, ideally curved, to get 4 usable 1920x1080 quadrants.
When the screen sizes go smaller, absolutely detail and quality increases, but for software development or text centric work is concerned, am I missing something when it comes to 6K or 8K Monitors?